Chapter Text
“Captain!” Elias called out as he walked through the front door.
“Yes, darling?” Peter called back, looking up from the book he had been paging through in the living room.
Elias shook his head, breaking into a smile, “I’m not talking to you and you know it,” he yelled again, “Cap!”
Elias’s face lit up as a big gray cat came running into the room and padded right up to his feet, gently brushing its head against his legs and looking up at him expectedly. He knelt down and scooped Captain up into his arms.
“Who’s the sweetest boy in the whole wide world?” Elias said in a high pitched voice as if that would somehow make the cat better understand English, “Did you miss me? Hm? Because I sure missed you!” Captain purred happily against his chest.
“And what about your fiancée? You miss him too?” Peter said, teasing, setting his book to the side to direct his full attention towards Elias and putting on his best show of being offended at the snub. Elias rolled his eyes.
“You know I missed you too, sailor.” Elias replied, continuing to pet Captain but moving from the entryway of the house over to where Peter was sitting. Peter smiled; he was not going to let up the dramatics just yet.
“No, no, clearly you love Captain more than me, you should probably just marry him instead,” he lamented and took off his engagement ring in a grand gesture, and Elias chuckled softly at the old joke.
***
Elias had been the one who wanted Captain in the first place. After Elias’s seasickness had caught up to him on their first date on the Tundra, Peter had promised that all subsequent dates would take place safely on dry land. Elias loved seeing the way Peter seemed so at home by the ocean, though, the way he relaxed and let his guard down in a way he never fully seemed to elsewhere. He suggested they start taking walks along the beach or the docks together instead and Peter agreed that was a lovely idea, so a few times a week from that point on they spent their evenings with nothing but each other and the waves for company. They had never needed anything else.
It was on one of these strolls that they found him. Elias had frozen midstep, Peter getting tugged back slightly as his arm was interlocked with Elias’s and he looked at him with confusion.
“Did you hear that?” Elias asked.
“Hear wha-” Peter started to ask but Elias quickly shushed him, holding up a hand for him to wait. He heard nothing but the familiar rush of wind past his ears, but he chose to indulge his boyfriend for a moment and keep listening. Then he heard it too: a soft cry.
“Where’s it coming from?” Peter asked, turning to look back at Elias to find that he was already breaking away from his arm to chase the sound down the docks. Peter sighed and jogged after him, catching up to find him kneeling in front of a gray kitten huddled against a wooden post. Peter stared at him, slightly baffled.
“Honey, what are you doing? Don’t get too close, it could have rabies.” Peter warned, but he could see the kitten had already wandered up to Elias and was brushing its little head against his outstretched hand. Elias looked up at Peter, his oak brown eyes sparkling. He knew that look.
“No. No way!” Peter protested, but it was no use. The small cat had crawled up into Elias’s arms and with one glance at his face, Peter could tell he was smitten. Elias stood up and cradled the cat tight.
“Look at it, Peter! We can’t just leave it out here all alone in the cold!”
He walked up to get a closer look and Elias did have a point. Its long fur was matted and Peter could see the faint outline of its ribs. It had clearly been alone for quite some time. His face softened.
“Look, I’m sure we could find someone else to take it in. I mean, do you even know how to take care of a cat?” Peter said, trying to come up with a good argument when he noticed Elias had started smiling “...what’s that face for?”
“You’re jealous aren’t you, Peter?”
“What?!?” Peter laughed in surprise “That’s ridiculous!”
Elias was full on grinning now.
“Peter’s jealous of a little kitten!” Elias said in a sing-songy joking voice, starting to half-walk-half-skip around Peter with the cat in his arms, “Poor Captain Lukas! His boyfriend stolen by a cat!”
Peter shook his head, no longer fighting back a smile as Elias’s antics had finally worn him down, “Well, I suppose if that's the case, then he’s the Captain now isn’t he.”
Elias laughed at that.
“Yes precisely!” he glanced down at the cat in his arms, “What do you think of that, Captain?”
***
Over that next year, they watched the little cat grow up and quickly become a part of their family. Cap was theirs together, but Elias had the stronger connection with him right from the start. He would greet Elias every day whenever he got home from work, was quick to lay down on his lap whenever he sat down, and Elias was always bringing him all sorts of new toys and treats. Peter said he spoiled the thing, but he loved that cat just as much as Elias did, and would even take Captain out on the water with him every once in a while. Unlike Elias, the cat was a natural sailor. Captain loved them both right back, and most nights he would curl up between them to sleep. When Peter finally proposed, Elias tried to insist Captain be his best man, though that idea was quickly shut down. He’d be the ring bearer instead, of course. Peter found it hard to imagine how he had ever objected to Captain becoming what is now such a wonderful part of their lives, but he and Elias still joked about it, and at the end of the day, it didn’t really matter to Peter which of them Elias greeted first when he got home. All that mattered was that they were his home.
***
The wedding was fast approaching, and with only a few days left to go, Elias walked through the front door and quietly clicked it shut behind him.
“Evening, Peter.” he said, throwing his coat on the hook next to him and walking out into the living room. Peter blinked at that.
“Oh, uh… Hey darling. How was your day?”
“Fine.” he said, his tone cold and dismissive. Peter was a little hurt by this, but just figured Elias had had a rough day at the office. He certainly knew that the Magnus Institute could be a… challenging place to work at times, so he decided not to push the issue. When he saw Captain run up the way he always did, though, he knew Elias would perk right up.
But Captain approached with a hesitance Peter had never seen in him before. Elias looked down at him with a passive glance and breezed straight past him to the kitchen. As he did so, Peter saw Captain shrink back away ever so slightly as Elias passed, his ears pinned down.
Peter paused for a moment before quickly walking around the couch to pick Captain up and trailing after Elias.
“I know what’ll cheer you up, I bet somebody missed you while you were gone,” Peter said and tried to hand Captain over to Elias, but as he did so Elias felt a sharp sting across his arm as the cat struggled out of his grip and bolted down the hallway. He looked down to see a bit of blood beginning to bead up where Captain’s claws had dug into his skin.
“Shit!” Elias gritted his teeth and darted over to the sink to run his arm under cold water. “Damn cat. We should get him declawed or something.”
Peter was horrified at the idea, but muttered a half-hearted “yeah, maybe,” and went off to grab bandages. It wasn’t worth arguing over right now, and he’d certainly be able to talk Elias out of it when he was out of whatever mood this was. He looked for Captain, but he was nowhere to be found. He tried to tell Elias but he brushed it off, saying he was probably just sleeping somewhere, that’s what cats do. He was probably right of course, Peter thought, Cap would turn up again soon enough. Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling of wrongness.
It wasn’t until that night that he saw Captain again. He jumped up onto the bed as he always did and Peter moved slightly to make space for him to lay down between them, but instead, Captain walked along the edge of the bed and curled up on Peter’s other side. Peter looked at the cat to his right and then back at his fiancée on his left and realization began to creep across his face as it finally clicked. Elias had never liked his eyes. He thought the brown was quite dull, but really they were warm and full of life, and Peter could lose himself in them for hours. The eyes staring back at him now, however, were a sharp, piercing green. He was hit with a wave of horror and disgust, and it took everything in him not to be sick. He rolled onto his side, turning his back to Elias and held Captain close, feeling the warmth against his chest as he tried to steady his breathing, and shut his eyes tight as they began to well with tears. He took a deep breath. Captain nuzzled his face in an attempt at comfort, but in that moment, laying there next to the two things he loved most, Peter had never felt more alone.
The Captains longed for the sea.